A train-driver begins to develop psychological problems, which interfere with his work and lead him to believe that his wife and his best friend are having an affair. When he then finds himself being forced into retirement, he makes up his mind that his last journey will be one that no-one ever forgets…

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Do they actually use the term “engineer”? In the UK at the time it would have been driver and fireman; anything else may have been an attempt to foreign-ify the film for export.

People were still saying “The Continent” in the 1970s.

I think the GWR may have cooperated because they weren’t worried about competition: well, how else were you going to get from London to Bristol? A motorcar is an expensive and unreliable business (just read Dornford Yates and all the tyre changes needed in his mad dashes across Europe), and flying is even more expensive and highly dangerous. (And the GWR;s public image, as a company in operation since 1833 with no higher rate of accidents than any of the others, was rock-solid.)

This may well have set up some of the clichés, but not in their absolute final form – the newlyweds aren’t just there for pathos, for example.

No, in fact I don’t think they call Charlie anything; I was the one who incorrectly called him an engineer.

Some of the quota quickies did sell overseas but I don’t think any of them were produced with that in mind.

The Great Western Railway: Sure, there’s a chance our employees will have a psychotic break en route, but what choice do you have? 😀

I’m still pretty gob-smacked by the scenes of Holt cackling and waving a gun around while wearing a GWR-logo hat, though.

Ah, but then, the newlyweds are not always there just for pathos! – this is what I meant about variation. They are in The High And The Mighty, for instance, but then in Jet Storm the point is that the two of them end up on the opposite sides of the, uh, debate over crisis management. And in Jet Over The Atlantic they get married onboard. So even fairly early they were keeping the framework but tweaking the execution.